Sick in St. Emillion

Since Ceil and the kids left, it's been my goal to travel each weekend -- primarily by car, through I hope to fly to some more exotic locales before too long.

On Wednesday, though, I could feel a cold coming on. By Friday morning I was pretty sure I had a low-grade fever. I lay in bed, as if stapled to the sheets, unable to rouse myself and go to work. My brain swam with small decisions: shall I pack and check out or tell them I'll stay through the weekend; if I check out, where will I go; how far am I willing to drive, given how crappy I feel.

I decided to stay put, reserve the room for the weekend and get better.

Then I stood up, threw all my stuff into my suitcase and checked out. It's good that my body and I get together for conversations now and again, but consensus is tough to come by.

During lunch, I reviewed my guide-books and decided to drive to St. Emillion -- about 4 hours away, just east of Bordeaux. St. Emillion is famous for wine. I'm famous for whining. So let's go.

I left town after lunch, pulled off to the side of the road at 4pm for a teleconference with folks in Seattle, and arrived in St. Emillion by 6pm. It's a charming, medieval village, surrounded on all sides by vineyards. One of the guide-books said there is one wine-shop for every eight residents in St. Emillion -- clearly, the place is designed to sell wine to tourists.

Having popped cold pills during the drive, I felt numb and dim-witted, but also hungry and anxious for a walk. The town is small and the cobblestone streets are narrow and steep. Most of the shops seemed to be closed for the season, and even on a Friday night there were few restaurants open. I found a likely looking place, though, and took a table near a large group of women out for a night on the town. (Later I realized that all the ladies were seated for dinner, while their husbands were standing in the bar. The husbands later filled out, en masse, waving and blowing kisses, headed for other bars, no doubt. Looked like fun.)

A few glasses of wine with dinner, and a couple of aspirin, and I collapsed into bed.

I was up early the next morning, enjoyed breakfast at the hotel: croissants, jam, coffee and orange juice. I hardly miss the eggs anymore. I set out for a walk about town, stopping at the Tourist Office and buying a ticket for a tour of the "catacombs" under the city. While I waited for the tour to begin, I climbed to the top of the near-by bell tower -- whacking my head hard at one point. Medieval French monks were a diminutive lot.

I climbed down from the tower and joined the group milling about outside L'office de Tourisme. It wasn't clear who the tour-guide was, but everyone was in high spirits, greeting each other and laughing. A few more folks showed up and we set off. When we were three blocks away, the bell in the tower struck 10:30am -- which seemed odd. This meant that the tour had left seven minutes early -- not a very French thing to do. Something was amiss.

So, having hung at the back of the group, I hustled up and tapped a guy on the shoulder. In French, I asked, Is this the tour? His answer: Yes, no, kind of, does anyone else speak English, who are you, anyway?

It soon became clear that I had fallen in with a bunch of folks who were indeed on an organized walk of some sort, but it wasn't the tour of the catacombs. I sprinted back to the Office de Tourisme.

My tour had yet to leave -- and when it did, it was only the tour-guide, myself and another couple. The tour-guide spoke a little English, but his French sounded weird. I could follow what he was saying, kind of, but I didn't recognize too many words. This must be the local accent, I decided.

At one point, the guy began to do his schpeil in halting English -- I shushed him, saying "Don't worry about it... French is fine." I turned to the couple on the tour and explained, in French, that my French was very poor, to which the woman replied, in English: I don't understand you. I took this to mean that my French was indeed very poor, and she couldn't make out what I was saying. But as she kept speaking to me I soon realized she was Spanish... and indeed, the strangely accented French the tour-guide was using was his crappy Spanish.

The lady spoke more English than the tour guide, and I spoke more French than the lady did, so the tour quickly became a collaborative effort. We'd pause to look at the sights, ask questions, nod at the answer and then turn to one another and say, "I have no idea. I'm pretty sure this is really old, though."

After the tour, I bid the Spaniards good-bye and set out to taste some wine.

I'll ask your indulgence at this point, because I'm going to skip past the wine-buying. Suffice it to say that I spent way more than I planned and more than we can afford and I'm still wracked with guilt and buyer's remorse. I'm also looking forward to having some really top-notch French wine to drink when I get home.

I ate lunch across the street from one of the wine shops -- the wine merchants showed up soon after I did, and sent a glass of wine over to me (a sure sign that I had thrilled them with my purchase). And then my fever caught up with me, so I retreated to the room for the rest of the day. I staggered out for dinner around 9pm-- sitting next to another solo-diner -- and then staggered back to the hotel room, plagued by feverish thoughts of Ceil's reaction to seeing my wine purchases on the on-line banking statement.

The same guy turned up at the hotel breakfast the next morning, and we laughed about seeing each other again. Turns out he's a photographer in town for some pictures to accompany a magazine article. The woman writing the article turned up a breakfast and we had a nice chat.

I climbed back in the car, took a few turns through the vineyards on my way out of town and typed "Issoudun" into the car's GPS system -- and then spent the next four hours steering to follow the pink line on the GPS display. Odd that the system took me home via a different route than I used on the trip out -- but it was a terrific drive on windy country roads.

And so now, back "home" in my dormitory room. Still under the weather, feeling crummy... but already thinking about next weekend.